Spray Granulation: Free-flowing Particles from pure Liquids

Starting Materials Spray Granulation

Liquids, watery solutions, emulsions and suspensions serve as precursors for the spray-granulation. Waxes and other melting raw materials can be processed as hot melts, melt emulsions and melt suspensions.

Through a whole range of different conditioning units, we are able to handle and work with the most different raw materials and bring them through mixing, blending, milling, dissolving, emulsifying, heating, cooling, carrying out or even simple chemical reactions (e.g. neutralisation) into the most suitable form for further processing in the fluid bed.

Process Technology Spray Granulation

Small droplets of liquid sprayed through nozzles solidify into particles through direct heat-transfer with hot inlet-air. The drying of liquids in combination with a simultaneous build-up of granulates, is one of the main characteristics of this kind of granulation.

The initially generated small particles (“seeds”) are held under fluidization and provide a surface for the layer-by-layer adsorption and drying for the following droplets. The final dust-free particles leave the reaction chamber through the classifying outlet with an adjustable size between 100 µm and 5,000 µm. In case of this special granulation, the created particles are harder and thicker by contrast to agglomerates.

This kind of granulation offers many advantages. Depending on physical properties and drying parameters, specific particle shapes (“Onion” and “Raspberry”) with different final characteristics and attributes can be produced.

In the case of a Spray Cooling a hot melt is sprayed into a flow of cold air ‘freezing’ instantaneously to small particles. Here, again, particles between 100 µm and < 10 mm can be generated.